Irving v. Lipstadt

Transcripts

In writing my own biographies of the leading 1to the Institute fur Zeitgeschichte, which is the 2Institute of Contemporary History in Munich. In the case 3of the Goebbels' diaries, after I retrieved them from 4Moscow, I additionally gave a set of copies to the 5archives of Monchen-Gladbach, his home town, where they 6maintain a collection of Goebbels' documents, the 7municipal archives. 8 In fact, the only items which I consider to be 9of greater source value than diaries, which are always 10susceptible to faking or tampering, are private letters. 11In my experience, once a private letter has been posted by 12its writer, it is virtually impossible for him to retrieve 13it and to alter its content. 14 If I may take the liberty of enlightening the 15court at this point by way of an example, I would say that 16I had earlier also found the diaries of Field Marshal 17Rommel; some I retrieved in shorthand from the American 18archives and I had them transcribed. Those in typescript 19turned out to have been altered some months after one 20crucial battle ("Crusader") to eradicate a tactical error 21which the Field Marshal considered he had made in the 22Western desert. But the hundreds of letters he wrote to 23his wife were clearly above any kind of suspicion. 24 On a somewhat earthier plane, while the diaries 25of the Chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, which have in 26part been recently retrieved from the same archives in

. P-61

1Moscow, yield little information by themselves, I have 2managed to locate in private hands in Chicago the 200 3letters which this murderous Nazi wrote to his mistress, 4and these contain material of much larger historical 5importance. 6 Until my career was sabotaged, therefore, I had 7earned the reputation of being a person who was always 8digging up new historical evidence; that was until the 9countries and the archives of the world were prevailed 10upon, as we shall see, to close their doors to me! 11 After I procured these 600 pages of manuscripts 12written by Adolf Eichmann when I visited Argentina in 13October 1991, the German Federal Archives grudgingly 14referred to me in a press release as a Truffle-Schwein, 15which I hope is more flattering than it sounds. 16 We are concerned here, however, primarily with 17the diaries of Dr Joseph Goebbels of which the Defendants 18made mention in their book. This is the inside story on 19those. 20 I begun the search for these diaries, in fact, 2130 years earlier. In my discovery are papers relating to 22the first search that I conducted for the very last 23diaries which Dr Goebbels dictated, in April 1945 -- right 24at the end of his life. Since there was no time for them 25to be typed up, Dr Goebbels had the spiral-bound shorthand 26pads buried in a glass conserving jar in a forest

. P-62

1somewhere along the road between Hamburg and Berlin. 2 Chance provided me in about 1969 with the 3"treasure map" revealing the precise burial place of this 4glass jar, and with the permission of the Communist East 5German Government, I and a team of Oxford University 6experts, equipped with a kind of ground penetrating radar 7(in fact, a proton magnetometer) mounted a determined 8attempt to unearth it in the forest. 9 We never found that particular truffle. 10Unfortunate, the topography of such a forest changes 11considerably in 20 years or more and, despite our best 12efforts, aided by the East German Ministry of the 13Interior, Communist Ministry of the Interior, and a 14biologist whose task would be to assess the age of the 15fungi and other biological materials found in and around 16the jar, we came away empty-handed. This is nothing new. 17Field work often brings disappointments like that. 18 Twenty-five years later, however, now back in 191992, I had the conversation which was to lead to the 20retrieval of the Goebbels' diaries in Moscow, and 21indirectly to our presence here in these courts today. 22 In May 1992, I invited long time friend, a 23leading historian at the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, to 24have lunch with me at a restaurant in Munich. We had been 25good friends since 1964, nearly 30 years, and she is still 26in the Institute's employ today. As my diaries show, this

. P-63

1friend and colleague, Dr Elke Frohlich, had dropped 2several hints during the previous 12 months that she had 3traced the whereabouts of the missing Goebbels' diaries. 4 We all knew, my Lord, those of us who had 5engaged in research into Hitler, Goebbels and the Third 6Reich, that Dr Goebbels had placed these diaries on 7microfiches -- that is photographic glass plates -- in the 8closing months of the War to ensure that they were 9preserved for posterity. But they had vanished since 10then. 11 His Private Secretary, Dr Richard Otte, whom I 12had questioned over 20 years previously in connection with 13our search in the forest in East Germany, had told us 14about these glass plates. So we knew they existed. I 15should mention that he was actually one of the small 16burial party who had hidden the glass jar, but he was 17unable to accompany us as at that time he was still in 18West German government employment. We could only presume 19that the glass plate microfiches were either destroyed in 20Berlin in the last weeks of the war or that they had been 21seized by the Red Army. 22 During this lunch-time conversation in Munich in 23May 1992, Dr Elke Frohlich revealed to me that the latter 24supposition was correct. She had seen them herself a few 25weeks previously -- she had held them in her hands -- on a 26visit to the archives in Moscow. My Lord, you can imagine

. P-64

1the thrill that kind of thing gives an historian to have 2something like that. 3 My recollection of the conversation at this 4point is that she continued by saying that the Institute's 5Directors were unwilling to fund a further expedition to 6procure these diaries. 7 Now that I have seen some of the documents 8provided to the Defendants in this action by the Russians 9and by the Institute, it is possible that my recollection 10on this point is wrong, namely, that the Institute were 11not willing to pay for it. 12 My recollection of the following is, however, 13secure. Dr Frohlich informed me that the Director of the 14Russian archives, the "trophy" archives, as they were 15known, Dr Bondarev, was in a serious predicament, as he 16was faced with the economic consequences of the collapse 17of the Soviet Empire; he had no longer the financial means 18necessary for the upkeep of the archives and the payment 19of his staff. 20 The plates, in my view, were seriously at risk. 21Dr. Frohlich indicated that if I were to take a sufficient 22sum of foreign currency to Moscow, I could purchase the 23glass plates from Dr Bondarev. It was clear from her 24remarks that Dr Bondarev had already discussed this 25prospect with her. 26 Dr Frohlich added that the glass plates were in